Medieval charters from Salford Hundred

Stuart Mendelsohn runs a superb blog examining the medieval documents of Salford Hundred in Lancashire – an area he rightly points out is among the least explored in England, at least as far as medieval history is concerned.

He’s just uploaded some magnificent high-resolution scans of some of the charters relating to Spotland, near Rochdale, which he found in Chetham’s Library, Manchester. I am going to have to have a stab at translating some of these – but the first difficulty will be transcribing them. Medieval handwriting is not the easiest thing to decipher when you’re not an expert in it.